"Milt, listen to me! It's all my fault. I, alone, am to blame. Come back! For God's sake, don't do anything rash!"
Again she tried to overtake him, to lay hold of him, but he broke into a run, and left her far behind, crying entreatingly to him through the darkness.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The darkness enveloped the hurrying man as it had done once before this night, when he stood silent and motionless in the middle of the road, near the toll-house, yet the girl still followed his retreating figure persistently through the gloom, beseeching him to return, to relinquish his fell purpose.
She stopped at last, understanding that it was futile to follow further, that he was deaf to her entreaties to turn back, and that she could no longer hope to overtake him. As she stood still and listened, she heard his retreating footsteps growing fainter and fainter far up the road.
Some minutes later, a second vivid band of light revealed his tall, dark figure sharply silhouetted against the sky, from the brow of the hill he had climbed, then darkness came again, like a black curtain, and blotted him from sight.
The girl stood for some time in the middle of the road, with hands clasped tightly together, and tear-stained face, striving to think connectedly, to reason calmly in the face of a new trouble.
What must she do? Which way to turn?